Readers Guide: Now at the library: 'Heads in Beds: a Reckless Memoir ...'

Friday

Jan 18, 2013 at 4:44 PMJan 18, 2013 at 4:47 PM

In recent years, the trend toward tell-all memoirs about working in various service industries has blown the whistle on restaurants and even libraries. Now Jacob Tomsky goes behind the elegant fašade of upscale hotels to reveal the surprising secrets hidden there. “Heads in Beds: a Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustlers, and So-Called Hospitality” (647.940) takes an entertaining look at the oddball doings of management, employees and guests. It even provides useful tips on ways of getting the most out of your next stay.

by Susie Stooksbury

In recent years, the trend toward tell-all memoirs about working in various service industries has blown the whistle on restaurants and even libraries. Now Jacob Tomsky goes behind the elegant façade of upscale hotels to reveal the surprising secrets hidden there. “Heads in Beds: a Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustlers, and So-Called Hospitality” (647.940) takes an entertaining look at the oddball doings of management, employees and guests. It even provides useful tips on ways of getting the most out of your next stay.

During the 1890s, wealthy American heiresses were in hot pursuit of titled Englishmen — or at least their mothers were. Caroline Maxwell's mother has chosen Lord Bremerton for her daughter, but feisty Caroline isn't willing to knuckle under. Her heart belongs to her brother's best friend Jack Culhane, who is wealthy in his own right, but doesn't have any social connections. He also is oblivious to her feelings. Can these two turn their backs on convention and find happiness? “The Husband List” is the new romance by popular Janet Evanovich and Dorien Kelly.

With World War II finally at an end, American intelligence operations still have work to do and will soon face a new threat. Not the Soviets, as most of the world powers believe, but a cabal of former Nazi officers who hope to launch a resurrection of the Reich from their new base in Argentina. W.E.B. Griffin and his co-author William E. Butterworth IV, provide plenty of heart-stopping action in their seventh “Honor Bound” novel “Empire and Honor,” featuring Lt. Col. Cletus Frade and his brave men.

For Anne Lamott, it doesn't matter whether you call it God or a Divine Being or even the Really Real, she believes there is a power outside of each of us. Lamott also believes many of our most honest communications with it come when we are at the most vulnerable points in our lives. She boils down her own conversations with this power into what she calls “the three essential prayers” — “Help, Thanks, Wow” (242.400).” It’s her latest, thought-provoking gem of a book.

A highly promising professional bicyclist in the 1990s and trusted domestique for Tour de France teammate Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton's career came to an abrupt halt after he tested positive for doping. Stripped of the Gold Medal he won in the 2004 Olympics, Hamilton was banned from the sport that had dominated his life. Hamilton takes us deep into the cut-throat world of professional cycling in “The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs” (796.620).

With Kurt Vonnegut's passing in 2007, America lost one of its most original and satiric writers. Two of his unpublished works have now been brought out together — his first novella, written several years before “Player Piano,” and his final, unfinished work. The first, “Basic Training,” follows the experiences of a young teen sent to live on a farm with his quirky cousins and their even quirkier father. In his final piece, “If God Were Alive Today,” Vonnegut uses stand-up comic Gil Berman as his no-hold-barred mouthpiece. Together these stories make up “We Are What We Pretend to Be.”

Other new titles:

Non-Fiction — “There Was a Country: a Personal History of Biafra” (966.900), by Chinua Achebe;